me to know he was on his way home to be a father to the children who rarely saw him.
Of course the person on the other end wasn’t Kris.
“Robin! Were you sitting on the telephone?”
I stared at the darkening sky and pictured Cecilia, auburn hair waving down her back, expressive, exquisitely pampered face scrunched up in question. I couldn’t picture the spot from which she was calling. She might be in a dressing room, getting ready to go onstage, or at her home in Pacific Palisades looking over the ocean.
“No,” I said, “I just hung up with Kris.”
When I didn’t go on she lowered her voice. “Is everything okay?”
“Not so much.” I blew out one breath before I gulped another. “In the scheme of things it’s nothing.”
“Tell me what it is.”
So I did. Cecilia doesn’t give up, and I had to leave time to call Talya and tell her that Gretchen wouldn’t need to stop at my house on the way to dinner. I wouldn’t be going.
After I finished, Cecilia was silent a moment. She doesn’t like Kris and never has, but she knows that criticizing him will drive a wedge between us. Cecilia would hate that worse than anything, even more than she hates the occasional scathing review of a concert or album.
“Call your next-door neighbor,” she said.
“Talya’s going to the dinner, too.”
“Her husband isn’t going, is he?”
“Michael?” Michael Weinberg is an anesthesiologist and never on call at night. “Ask Michael to babysit?”
“Why not? He’ll be babysitting their daughter anyway. What’s her name?”
“Channa. But Michael bores Nik to death. He’s always trying to get him interested in chemistry or astronomy, and Nik hides when the Weinbergs come over, just to avoid him.”
“Too bad for Nik, but who’s more important, you, a grown woman who needs to see her friends, or a twelve-year-old boy? Besides, Nik’s probably really hiding from Channa. The last time I saw her she was growing up and out, and I bet he doesn’t know what to say around her anymore.”
I carefully weigh advice from Cecilia, at least advice of a personal nature. Her life is larger than mine, larger than almost anybody’s. There’s not much room for simple matters, and other people, like Donny, her personal manager, handle those.
Still, she’s often surprisingly insightful, and this time she was right about Michael, and about Channa, who one day in the not so distant future would be as pretty and well-endowed as her mother. Cecilia has been behind me pushing hard since the day we met. And this time I needed the shove.
“You nailed it again. I’m going to hang up and call him.” I glanced at my watch. “Can we talk another time?”
“Okay, but don’t put me off. Something important’s come up, and we need to talk. So call when you’re free and I’ll drop everything.” She hung up.
I could probably put my children through college on what a tabloid would pay me for Cecilia’s private cell number.
Twenty-five minutes later, Talya and I climbed into Gretchen’s car, me in the front, Talya in the back next to another neighbor, Margaret. Our neighborhood is made up of young to middle-aged professionals, but the similarities stop there. We represent every religion and political outlook. Gretchen, a Reese Witherspoon look-alike, is a professional fund-raiser for the Republican Party. Brown-haired ordinary me assembled campaign literature during both Obama campaigns. Black-haired Talya is a Conservative Jew; red-haired Margaret planned to shut herself away with the Carmelites until she fell madly in love in her senior year of college. The other four women we were meeting at the restaurant are just as diverse, one from China, another who grew up on a farm in South Africa.
I wasn’t looking forward to a confrontation with Kris when we both got home, but I was looking forward to conversation and a meal with my friends in the meantime.
Two hours later, as we stood up to leave the restaurant, I was sorry I had come.
On the way out the door Talya and Gretchen were still locked in the conversation that had consumed them throughout dinner. I had been sitting beside Talya, but we had hardly exchanged a sentence. She and Gretchen had discussed their jobs, volleying questions and responses back and forth across the table. Talya, who is now managing a small local theater, wanted Gretchen to give her tips for their next fund-raising drive.
On my other side Lynn, who had once been my favorite tennis partner, had chatted with another woman about camps their children might attend next summer. Margaret, across from me, spent a large portion of the evening texting a colleague, apologizing for texting and then texting some more.
Our lives are now separate. My neighbors are moving forward without looking back. The common ground we once shared is giving way under our feet.
Halfway through the meal I’d finally admitted to myself that I was the only one at the table with nothing new to say.
In the parking lot Gretchen unlocked the car, but instead of sitting in the front passenger seat, as I had on the trip there, I opened the rear door.
“Robin, I’ll be happy to sit there again,” Talya said.
“No, you sit up front with Gretchen. You two haven’t finished your conversation.”
Talya looked puzzled, as if she heard the undertone to my words. I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you and I both sit back here so we can catch up? We hardly had a chance tonight, and I never see you anymore.”
How differently the evening would have ended if I’d said yes. But I didn’t. I remember smiling. I remember that the smile felt like aerobic exercise. I remember the seconds the exchange took, seconds that later might have made all the difference. Then I remember shaking my head and gesturing to the front. “We can talk another time. You go ahead.”
Talya and I had been friends for so long that she knew I was hurt. Recognition flashed across her face, but she smiled, too, as if to say, “We have a date,” and climbed into the passenger seat beside Gretchen.
Ten minutes later Talya took the brunt of the impact when a driver streaked through a stop sign and plowed into the right side of Gretchen’s car. I think I remember seeing the small SUV inexplicably heading for us. I do remember terror rising in my chest, like the bitterest bile.
I don’t remember the crash itself. When I came to in the hospital a doctor told me Talya was gone.
Talya died instantly, and I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have changed if she and I hadn’t traded seats.
Kris
After my conversation with Robin I turned off my cell phone. Turning it off was stupid, spiteful and weirdly satisfying, but after she hung up I figured we had nothing else to say to each other. And if I was wrong about that, I didn’t want to know.
Even though our call had ended, I know Robin well enough to imagine how she must look at that moment. Her round blue eyes would be shuttered, as if somebody had extinguished the light. Her lips wouldn’t be pursed, since that’s too obvious a signal, but tension would pull at the corners.
Robin hides emotion well, which only makes sense. If you know you’ll be challenged or punished for everything you feel, you soon learn to make sure those feelings are private. After thirteen years of marriage, most of the time I still have to guess what’s going on inside her.
This time, though, there would be no guessing. My wife asks for very little. Tonight I’d made certain even that was too much. But knowing this, I’m still powerless to fix the situation. I’m at a critical stage in my career, and nobody will benefit more than my